Search Marsden awards 2008–2017
Search awarded Marsden Fund grants 2008–2017
Fund Type: Marsden Fund
Category: Fast-Start
Year Awarded: 2008
Title: Reluctant Wanderers: women re-imagine the margins, 1775-1800
Recipient(s): Dr I Horrocks | PI | Massey University
Public Summary: This project will explore how and why the figure of the female wanderer became important in late eighteenth-century British literary culture. There is a significant understudied corpus of literary texts from the last three decades of the eighteenth-century that foreground this figure. 'Reluctant Wanderers' will analyse the uses to which the figure of the wanderer is put in texts by Mary Wollstonecraft, Charlotte Smith, Frances Burney, Ann Radcliffe and other women writers, critically examining their content, context and formal attributes to reveal a uniquely female contribution to wide-ranging debates about the nature of sympathy, community and social exclusion.
Total Awarded: $195,556
Duration: 3
Host: Massey University
Contact Person: Dr I Horrocks
Panel: HUM
Project ID: 08-MAU-028
Fund Type: Marsden Fund
Category: Fast-Start
Year Awarded: 2016
Title: Remembering together: Collective memory and collective intentionality
Recipient(s): Dr KH Michaelian | PI | University of Otago
Public Summary: Collective memory has been investigated in two distinct research traditions. Psychologists have investigated remembering in small-scale groups; social scientists and humanists have investigated remembering in large-scale groups. Humanists in other disciplines have made key contributions to our understanding of collective memory, and it is imperative that philosophers, too, begin to engage with this dynamic interdisciplinary field. Philosophical theories of collective intentionality have the potential to provide key theoretical underpinnings to collective memory research. At the same time, collective memory provides an invaluable opportunity to test and refine those accounts. This project will carry out a sustained philosophical investigation of collective memory, producing a unified account of the nature of remembering at multiple scales. The account will have benefits both for empirical collective memory research and for philosophy. It will contribute to the theoretical sophistication of collective memory research by providing a framework capable of integrating existing findings and suggesting new lines of inquiry. It will contribute to the empirical sophistication of philosophical accounts of collective intentionality by bringing these into contact with rich bodies of empirical knowledge on the workings of collective memory.
Total Awarded: $300,000
Duration: 3
Host: University of Otago
Contact Person: Dr KH Michaelian
Panel: HUM
Project ID: 16-UOO-016
Fund Type: Marsden Fund
Category: Standard
Year Awarded: 2017
Title: Removing nitrate from contaminated water using methane. Which microbes are doing the work?
Recipient(s): Associate Professor PA Gostomski | PI | University of Canterbury
Ms KHR Baronian | PI | University of Canterbury
Dr L Weaver | PI | Institute of Environmental Sciences and Research
Dr LF Burbery | AI | Institute of Environmental Sciences and Research
Associate Professor MJ Manefield | AI | University of New South Wales
Public Summary: Nitrate-contaminated water causes serious health and environmental problems (e.g. blue baby syndrome, toxic algae blooms and cancer). Intensive farming and municipal wastewater disposal are the leading causes of high nitrate levels. For complete nitrate removal to occur, an oxygen-free (anaerobic) environment is required. This converts the nitrate to harmless nitrogen gas. Recent research has indicated that methane can be used to drive nitrate removal. However, it is unclear how methane drives nitrate removal, as the typical methane-using microbes require oxygen, which normally prevents the conversion of nitrate to nitrogen.
To understand the methane-driven system, we need to determine which microbes, among the many different types of microbes present in water, are removing the nitrate. We will use methane labelled with a stable isotope of carbon. Only microbes feeding on the methane will incorporate the isotope allowing us to identify which groups of organism are active in the microbial community under different conditions during nitrate removal.
This project will be the first attempt to obtain this knowledge and couple it to nitrate removal in different environmental conditions. This project will increase the fundamental knowledge of the biological nitrogen cycle and improve the design of systems that remove nitrate from contaminated waters.
Total Awarded: $945,000
Duration: 3
Host: University of Canterbury
Contact Person: Associate Professor PA Gostomski
Panel: EIS
Project ID: 17-UOC-059
Fund Type: Marsden Fund
Category: Fast-Start
Year Awarded: 2013
Title: Researching ourselves: social surveys in New Zealand
Recipient(s): Dr CM Greenhalgh | PI | The University of Auckland
Public Summary: Funding not taken up
Total Awarded: $300,000
Duration: 3
Host: The University of Auckland
Contact Person: Dr CM Greenhalgh
Panel: HUM
Project ID: 13-UOA-228
Fund Type: Marsden Fund
Category: Fast-Start
Year Awarded: 2015
Title: Resettled but not reunited: refugees and transnational belonging through digital media
Recipient(s): Dr JM Marlowe | PI | The University of Auckland
Professor SM Gifford | AI | Swinburne University of Technology
Public Summary: Refugees can now freely (re)engage with their global diaspora as increasingly affordable and accessible internet streaming transcends well-defined territorial borders with overseas family and friends. This project provides new knowledge about how resettled refugees reconnect with their transnational networks through social media to theorise the transformative capacities (and limitations) for creating and maintaining social relationships when physical reunion with loved ones is not possible. As refugees undertake 'digital-unification' with transnational networks and remain engaged in their home-country affairs, it remains unknown whether such digital portals impede or enhance social integration and citizenship experiences in their new settlement country. Incorporating an innovative participant-centred design, this project uses online methods with resettled refugees living in New Zealand and their transnational networks to understand the ways they digitally reconnect across distance through social media. The current global refugee crisis highlights the need to reconceptualise the nexus of family life, diaspora, geographic place, web-based connectivity and virtual forms of support/care as our digital worlds create new possibilities for social interaction. This ground-breaking study of refugees in a digital age provides original and timely contributions relating to the strategic and inventive ways they sustain meaningful social interaction and belonging within and across national borders.
Total Awarded: $300,000
Duration: 3
Host: The University of Auckland
Contact Person: Dr JM Marlowe
Panel: SOC
Project ID: 15-UOA-168
Fund Type: Marsden Fund
Category: Fast-Start
Year Awarded: 2012
Title: Resolving the nanostructure of the cochlear synapse
Recipient(s): Dr M Barclay | PI | The University of Auckland
Dr D Baddeley | AI | The University of Auckland
Public Summary: Sound information is encoded with high precision at the synapses between the sensory cells and the primary auditory neurons in the cochlea. A heterogeneous population of synapses mediate this efficient neurotransmission, however the molecular make-up and development of this heterogeneity is unknown. We will utilise super resolution imaging technology to resolve the spatial and developmental differences in the nanostructure of these synapses to further understand the mechanisms that mediate this development and how these heterogeneous synapses facilitate high fidelity transmission. These data are essential for our understanding of auditory function and pathophysiology.
Total Awarded: $300,000
Duration: 3
Host: The University of Auckland
Contact Person: Dr M Barclay
Panel: CMP
Project ID: 12-UOA-333
Fund Type: Marsden Fund
Category: Fast-Start
Year Awarded: 2015
Title: Restriction of gene transfer in pathogenic bacteria by a novel CRISPR-Cas system
Recipient(s): Dr RHJ Staals | PI | University of Otago
Public Summary: CRISPR-Cas is a prokaryotic adaptive immune system that restricts horizontal transfer of foreign genetic elements which carry important genetic traits, such as antibiotic resistance and virulence. The three classical CRISPR-Cas systems have been studied extensively over the last few years, and this has led to a revolution in genome editing. Recently, bioinformatic analyses identified a fourth CRISPR-Cas system (Type IV) in several pathogenic bacteria. No experimental information is available about these systems. I will characterize the structural and enzymatic properties of Type IV CRISPR-Cas to address key fundamental questions about this system and its role in controlling horizontal gene transfer.
Total Awarded: $300,000
Duration: 3
Host: University of Otago
Contact Person: Dr RHJ Staals
Panel: CMP
Project ID: 15-UOO-122
Fund Type: Marsden Fund
Category: Standard
Year Awarded: 2012
Title: Rethinking future security: exploring the nexus between state-based and indigenous security systems in the Pacific
Recipient(s): Dr S Ratuva | PI | The University of Auckland
Public Summary: The dominant regional security discourse which forms the basis of the Pacific Islands Forum's security agreements such as the Biketawa Declaration is often framed in relation to Australia’s security interests. This has overshadowed our understanding of the actual security situations in the local Pacific islands communities. The security systems at the local community level and their potential have not been well understood nor deemed important by policy makers. I believe that security must be framed locally to reflect the diverse and distinctive features and needs of individual countries and must not be driven by big power ideology. Using Fiji, Tonga, New Caledonia and Solomon Islands as case studies, this research challenges the dominant regional security discourse and its prescription for neoliberal reform to achieve stability. It argues that instead of using ideologically driven general labels such as 'arc of instability' a more appropriat approach is to study the interface between state-based and community-based security systems and how they can inform alternative security approaches which are culturally relevant, inclusive, gender friendly and people-centered.
Total Awarded: $521,739
Duration: 3
Host: The University of Auckland
Contact Person: Dr S Ratuva
Panel: SOC
Project ID: 12-UOA-117
Fund Type: Marsden Fund
Category: Standard
Year Awarded: 2015
Title: Rethinking language change in a super-diverse city
Recipient(s): Professor M Meyerhoff | PI | Victoria University of Wellington
Dr AH Charters | PI | The University of Auckland
Dr CI Watson | PI | The University of Auckland
Dr EY Ballard | PI | The University of Auckland
Public Summary: Cities today aren't like the cities sociolinguistics cut its teeth on; Auckland is a prime example of this. In parts of Auckland there is no ethnic majority and up to 50% of the population is under 15. These demographics create situations that profoundly challenge widely-held principles about how language changes and who leads language change. We use quantitative methods - including some innovative resources our team has developed - to explore how the increased diversity of Auckland reveals new processes and trajectories for language change. We use data from younger and older speakers in two communities of Auckland (one that has no ethnic majority; one that is predominantly Pakeha/European) to test our hypotheses. We also draw on oral history materials that allow us to place patterns we observe today in the context of deeper time. Our work will show that predictions about how language change progresses must take the specifics of today's new, superdiverse cities into account.
Total Awarded: $580,000
Duration: 3
Host: Victoria University of Wellington
Contact Person: Professor M Meyerhoff
Panel: HUM
Project ID: 15-VUW-004
Fund Type: Marsden Fund
Category: Standard
Year Awarded: 2015
Title: Rethinking the future of freshwater in Aotearoa New Zealand
Recipient(s): Dr KT Fisher | PI | University of Otago
Dr M Parsons | PI | The University of Auckland
Public Summary: River restoration is a priority for Maori and the Crown, who are negotiating new governance arrangements to improve river health and enable kaitiakitanga. The continued exclusion of different understandings of freshwater in management approaches is blocking urgently needed progress to address declining river health and enable just and sustainable river futures. This project seeks to explore how diverse knowledge systems and practices might inform effective freshwater management now and in the future. Our overall goal is to co-produce knowledge about freshwater with Maori and other stakeholders to determine: what social expectations accompany river restoration; how these expectations shape the range of responses that are considered reasonable and just; and, how these expectations influence metrics of environmental value and success.
Total Awarded: $615,000
Duration: 3
Host: The University of Auckland
Contact Person: Dr KT Fisher
Panel: SOC
Project ID: 15-UOA-113